2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumEnough with Bernie Sanders - Stephen Stromberg in WaPo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/06/01/enough-with-bernie-sanders/?tid=hybrid_collaborative_1_naBut the truth is that Sanders does not deserve a movement, and his losing campaign does not deserve unusual deference and concessions. His tale about American oligarchy is simplistic, his policy proposals are shallow, his rejection of political reality is absurd, his self-righteousness and stubbornness are unbecoming. And, yes, he has lost. Here are some simple points worth repeating:[/font]
Sanderss path to the Democratic presidential nomination is essentially nonexistent. His only hope rests on convincing Democratic superdelegates, nearly all of whom back Hillary Clinton, to swing his way. They will not do that. It is incoherent for Sanders to ask them to do so, given that he has attacked superdelegates as non-democratic actors in the nominating process and that Clinton will almost certainly end the cycle with more votes and more pledged delegates. It is also staggeringly arrogant that Sanders would think that superdelegates, the Democratic establishment sorts that he has spent the whole campaign cartoonishly attacking as tools of Wall Street, would be open to his entreaties.
It is politically reasonable for the superdelegates to stick with Clinton. The poll numbers Sanders cites to argue that he would be a stronger nominee do not reflect the impressions voters would have after the Republicans engaged in a sustained anti-Sanders assault the sort of thing Clinton has endured for decades. Polling shows that Sanders does not, in fact, do unusually well among true independents and that many of these crucial swing voters have not formed an opinion of him.
A Clinton nomination would be wholly legitimate. Sanders zealot Seth Abramson writes, While not rigged, there is no question that the Democratic Partys primary process which uses superdelegates to create an appearance of pre-election electoral inevitability and closed primaries and onerous registration requirements to exclude many new, independent, and party-switching voters has dramatically favored Mrs. Clinton. This is nonsense, considering that Sanders has benefited from weird, anti-democratic quirks of the nominating process. FiveThirtyEight ran the numbers and found that Clinton has been hurt at least as much by caucuses as Sanders has been hurt by closed primaries.
So, enough with the reality-denial. Enough with the sanctimony. Enough with the attitude that only Sanderss agenda counts. Enough with the dream that his movement is broader and more powerful than it has proved to be at the ballot box. Enough with the paranoid conspiracy theorizing, the lazy attacks on the establishment, the platitudes about the right to health care and the right to free college without realistic plans to realize them, the delegitimization of those who disagree, the scorning of practicality, the outrageous negativity about the state of the country and the simplistic narrative of evil 1 percenters who are to blame for everything that is wrong. Enough with the excuses for half-baked policy proposals (It is the direction, not the specifics, that matter!). Enough with the political revolution.
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lunamagica
(9,967 posts)rest.
Great article. Thanks, Bob
glowing
(12,233 posts)system that is rigged and unfair to the masses, just STFU, go back to your minimum wage jobs, and take it. The status quo is going to continue to strap you down and abuse you and offer nothing in return for you....
Agnosticsherbet
(11,619 posts)thanks
mmonk
(52,589 posts)RBInMaine
(13,570 posts)B Calm
(28,762 posts)http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=5558635&mesg_id=5558664
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=385&topic_id=94494&mesg_id=94687
frylock
(34,825 posts)choie
(4,111 posts)FSogol
(45,484 posts)DefenseLawyer
(11,101 posts)Next you're going to tell me there was gambling at Rick's.
Carolina
(6,960 posts)Bohunk68
(1,364 posts)Armstead
(47,803 posts)it's all an illusion
Broward
(1,976 posts)riversedge
(70,210 posts)....Enough with the dream that his movement is broader and more powerful than it has proved to be at the ballot box.....
JCanete
(5,272 posts)scares you. You are content with the system we have. You are trusting of it. You believe on some level that the people winning in this society deserve to be winning, and that the people losing ... well they deserve to be given charity. You are okay with incrementalism that continues to step us slowly to the right, because really, when it comes down to it, you are fiscal conservatives who just happen to be pro choice.
Number23
(24,544 posts)K&R
Fawke Em
(11,366 posts)Number23
(24,544 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Stromberg needs to ask Bernie about those realistic plans.
Stromberg has not listened to Bernie. He is just writing words based on imaginary assumptions. He needs to actually talk to Bernie about how Bernie is going to realize his plans.
The state of journalism and the media in our country is pitiful. Don't journalists do research on their topics before writing about them these days? I think not.
Twas a time . . . .
Number23
(24,544 posts)how he will implement his policies or even accurately explain what the CURRENT policy is on issues, let alone how his will be different. And not only in the beginning of his campaign, even just a few days ago he was woefully unprepared to answer questions that anyone running for president should be able to answer.
That ain't Stromberg's or anyone else's problem or fault.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)and very vague ideas.
I remember a speech she gave on the economy at the New School. It was supposed to be a big policy speech. She proposed "growth." We have growth. Most, in fact nearly all of the benefit from the economic growth goes to the top 1% in terms of wealth in our population. She has only reluctantly and very weakly addressed income disparity. Anyone who trusts her on that issue is a fool.
Bernie's plans for strengthening Social Security, funding free college tuition by taxing speculative trades on Wall Street and taking the profit out of health care insurance are solid, fiscally solid ideas for solving very specific, very concrete, very identifiable and serious problems. They are an excellent way to shift some of the wealth back to the middle class and working people and the poor without drastically changing the structure of our economy.
Sanders is the most brilliant candidate in this election. There is no doubt in my mind about that.
He is prescient and has real vision. His vote on Iraq proved that. But that is not the only vote and stance that he has taken that was prescient and visionary.
Bernie is the best candidate in this race.
We shall see what happens. Hillary is quite a weak candidate. I wonder whether her supporters have tried to visualize how she will deal with Trump.
I have. And it was not a pretty sight. She will get very upset, act huffy and give him more and more to laugh at and ridicule.
Bernie, on the other hand will, with his very natural sense of humor, put Trump in his place and allow Trump to show his Trump self for the fool that Trump is.
Bernie is the right candidate for the Democratic Party for 2016. If we mess up as a Party and miss our opportunity to nominate Bernie, we will regret it. Our whole nation will regret it. I'm 73. Not since FDR have we, in my lifetime, had a candidate of the high caliber and integrity that Bernie has.
We need Bernie Sanders to lead the country as president.
The entire Clinton movement needs to take a back seat.
Someone showed me a chart of the balance of Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Not since 1949 have we had so few Democrats -- 188 I believe -- in Congress.
That decline in the Democratic Party's role in Congress is thanks to the limits and irrelevancy of the Clinton wing of the Party. Hopefully, we who support Bernie can move the entire Democratic Party to a more relevant political philosophy for our country.
This is just the beginning. But as I said, it will be tragic if the Party picks Hillary rather than Bernie.
Number23
(24,544 posts)And I'm sure that the rest of your post was as informed and relevant as your opening sentence.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Bernie started at something like 3%.
On top of that, there has been fraud in this election. Ballots have disappeared.
And now, in California, we have the threat of possibly not enough ballots for our decline to state and Democratic voters.
I have been registering voters on the college campuses in my area. The enthusiasm for Bernie is overwhelming.
I agree that I did not go into much detail in my post. Had I backed up my claims as adequately as I can, you probably would not have wanted to read it because it would have been extremely long.
But if you listen to Bernie's speeches (and I can tell from your post that you have not), you would realize that Bernie does not talk through his hat.
Bernie's proposal to reform our justice system is complex but well thought out. Marijuana (and I'd be the last to use it) should be as legal as alcohol at the very least. It certainly seems to be less dangerous and deadly than alcohol. Then addiction should be treated as a medical problem. We need to do a lot more research on it and find medically and psychologically sound ways to deal with it. Only if we have single payer healthcare will we be able to provide the medical care for addiction that is needed. Many addicts lack the financial resources and the stable lifestyles required to participate in a scheme as complicated as Obamacare or even (in California) MediCal.
Ending the use of privately owned, for-profit prisons is key to lowering the number of inmates in our prisons. Prisons are necessary. But we must try to keep people out of prison. I used to visit our local juvenile halls on a regular basis. We need to do so much more to build positive community for troubled young people. Just warehousing them as we do now is not working.
Rehabilitation used to be at least the claimed goal of a prison sentence. Now -- not really. We have a lot of work to do there. Only Bernie is even thinking about the serious, underlying causes of our troubled justice system.
I could go on and on with regard to each of Bernie's issues. But I can only say that I am utterly enthused by his compassionate approach to all of the problems that face us.
On top of all that, he is utterly brilliant. His questioning of Alan Greenspan in Congress, his statement upon voting No on the Iraq War Resolution and his statements about Israel and Palestine prove that compassion that will make him a great president.
I fully support Bernie Sanders. He is the truly human being and certainly the most brilliant candidate this year.
I recommend strongly that you read his book, Outsider in the White House.
It is phenomenal that he rose from 3% of the support in the primary to the percentage he has now. He has won, I believe, 20 state Democratic primaries although few had heard of him just a little over a year ago. Had he started a few months earlier, he would now be the presumptive nominee.
When it comes to integrity and trustworthiness he beats both Trump and Clinton in all polls.
Read his book to find out how he deals with attacks and negative advertising.
And the greatest thing about Bernie is his dedication to getting big, corporate money and the money of the very wealthy out of campaign finance. We cannot claim to be a democracy when Saudi Arabia can give money to the Clinton Foundation which employs Clinton loyalists who then play active roles in the Clinton campaign for the presidency. That is rather obscene in my view.
Bernie is talking to us, the people.
Hillary talks to the big money.
That's what this election is about. That is what differentiates the candidates in the Democratic Primary.
Perhaps the best argument for Bernie is the fact that he won over 85% of the votes in the Democratic primary in his home state of Vermont. That is an amazing vote of confidence from the people who know him best. He is the candidate who should win. If he doesn't, all Americans lose.
Eko
(7,282 posts)people employed in the health insurance industry. They will be laid off with single payer, huge hit, what is Sanders plan to mitigate this?. Health insurance is about 17% of GDP, without that our GDP will take a huge loss, once again what is Sanders plan to mitigate that? These are simple questions that any intelligent person would want answered, why have these not been provided?
Bohunk68
(1,364 posts)trucking industry in the mid 70's and being laid off with thousands of other office personal (Union personnel were agglomerated because of union contracts), I have no sympathy whatsoever with that argument. Go out and get retrained like others have had to do over the decades. It happens.
The 70's worked out real well. To put that into perspective housing is about the same amount,,,, didnt we have a problem with loosing that much of our GDP recently ,,, cant put my figure on it. Anyways what were we talking about, oh yeah, housing is about the same amount of our GDP and it would be like if we had some kind of bubble burst.
SpareribSP
(325 posts)If this post would be allowed under the new rules? Calling a huge group of voters delusional is kind of harsh, and honestly isn't constructive. Bernie currently has something like 66% of the under 45 vote in California. Saying they have absolutely nothing going for them and are just denying reality is just... Well... denying reality. Sanders supporters have their reasons, as you can see people posting in this thread.
baldguy
(36,649 posts)and insist their spin on issues is true when it isn't - all of which can be seen in this thread - then yes, that's delusional.
MohRokTah
(15,429 posts)Marr
(20,317 posts)So they can pass the nomination to some other insider crook without argument. You know that's what these increasingly frantic demands that he drop out are about.
AtomicKitten
(46,585 posts)Tarc
(10,476 posts)Marr
(20,317 posts)Clinton may or may not be indicted. She may or may not drop out. But the people in her small circle are pretty obviously doing what they can to prepare for that possibility.
Tarc
(10,476 posts)MohRokTah
(15,429 posts)Doctor Jack
(3,072 posts)and those are the same people that are the superdelegates. He has been...unfriendly towards the DNC and mainstream democrats, to say the least, but he expects those people to now get behind him...because....??? It would be like me when I was a teenager telling my dad to fuck off and that I didn't need him but then asking if I could borrow his car for the night. In politics you need to make friends and gain allies. You can't give everyone the middle finger, say you are going to do it all on your own, and then ask for a massive favor.
Unless Sanders is the most brilliant political strategist in the last 1000 years, I see his odds of winning over hundreds of superdelegates between 0 and impossible.
Response to Bill USA (Original post)
Post removed
Fawke Em
(11,366 posts)CorkySt.Clair
(1,507 posts)JCanete
(5,272 posts)calling out a corrupt system. Part of telling the truth is getting labeled shit, so its no surprise. It is disappointing that democratic voters like yourself are part of that effort.
CorkySt.Clair
(1,507 posts)Coming to a birthday party near you.
JCanete
(5,272 posts)contributing something of substance. You'd just be risking an embarrassing deconstruction of your thesis anyway. Best to just burp out one liners.
CorkySt.Clair
(1,507 posts)JCanete
(5,272 posts)ignorant. You aren't here, on a discussion board, to have a discussion. That's fine, but occasionally its worth challenging unsupported nonsense.
CorkySt.Clair
(1,507 posts)There's no indication Bernie will be performing at birthday parties.
JCanete
(5,272 posts)Totally worth reading for the same exact crap that keeps getting shoveled.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Kall
(615 posts)of 16 negative articles in 16 hours.
Response to Bill USA (Original post)
TM99 This message was self-deleted by its author.